Custom-made costumes for all performance genres

Tag Archives: Kitri

Just when I thought the year was getting quieter for Australian tutus I received a rush of calls for YAGP tutus. I almost couldn’t fit this one in but a position on my schedule opened up.

This is a lovely traditional Spanish tutu is a gorgeous dark red dupioni silk with light gold-embroidered tulle plate.

The lace has a subtle gold thread thread it

We decided on a bright red skirt to contrast with the darker reds in the bdice and plate. Actually the black tulle of the lace brings the red of the skirt right down.

nine layers of stiff ballet net

After gathering the net on fishing line I steam each layer ready for sewing directly to the panty. In the picture below you can see I’ve sewn on guidelines in 2 colours so I don’t get confused where I’m up to. Over the hip flexor the ruffles are only about 8mm apart!

sewing on the layers

After sewing on 9 layers of stiff ballet net I squeeze the skirt onto my patented Dieckmann tutu tacking form (that I’m not allowed to call a tutu butt).

tacking layers 9, 8 and 7

After tacking the skirt, I gathered the lace onto fishing line to get an idea of how much I’d need for tier.

gathered lace

I did a test ruffle on the skirt to see what sort of ratio looked best.

test ruffle

From here I measured out gathered lace for each tier and pinned it to a net plate then I wrangled it under the sewing machine.

pinning tier 2 to the plate

It was exciting getting all the tiers on. The black tulle of the lace gave the bright red net a nice dark shade. The layers were tacked to the net plate with my sanity saving tagging gun. I also used the tagging gun to tacked the plate to the top layer of the tutu.

finished plate

And I saved a bit of the lace for the sleeves and mounted it onto some fine black stretch mesh.

sleeves

After some emails to and fro between Sydney and Los Angeles we agreed the lace on the bodice needed some “negative” space to break up its solid appearance. While that worked well on the plate the bodice needed to read differently.

beads, sequins and rhinestones

I loved putting this tutu together. The plate is just magic!

skirt detail

All the pieces went together beautifully. Another beautiful pattern from Suzanne Dieckmann especially designed for Spanish style tutus.